Tag Archives: Cubs

1) The day that the Mets lost and the Brewers won, on the last day of the season (breaking their first place tie), was one of the most exciting baseball-viewing experiences I’ve had in the last few years. My son and I were watching the Mets game on the TV and the Brewers game on MLBtv (Internet), and even though I’m not a Brewers fan, I could feel their hunger to make it to the postseason (for the first time in 26 years). Sabathia pitched like a God. And the pain that Mets fans feel, having lost the division on the last day of the season TWO YEARS IN A ROW, might be their payback for games 6 and 7 of the 1986 World Series. What comes around goes around…

2) The Cubs’ problems were clearly mental. You don’t finish the season with the best record in MLB and then drop three in a row in the Division Series unless you’re psyched out. And you don’t make three errors in one inning with your ace on the mound unless you’re psyched out. What did the Red Sox do after game 3 of the 2004 ALCS (down, three games to none) to gain the momentum they’ve had ever since? They didn’t suddenly get BETTER. Something clicked in their heads. Oh, what would the Cubs give for the formula for that “click?”

3) I enjoy watching the NLCS games almost as much as I will enjoy watching the ALCS games. It’s baseball. Playoff baseball. Every at bat, every pitch is one of the most important in each player’s career. This is what these players dreamed about, playing wiffle ball in their driveways growing up. The thousands of hours of practice, the hundreds and thousands of games they have played in their lives, have all led to playing in baseball’s “final four.” Every starter, every bench player, every relief pitcher, even the managers and third base coaches could be part of a moment that will define their careers — and it could happen at any time. Plus, these are great players, many of them future hall of famers — Howard, Utley, Rollins, Hamels, Lidge, Ramirez, Furcal, Maddux, Lowe, and of course, Joe Torre.

4) I sent out a new poll to the Red Sox Nation governors this evening. Here are my answers to my own questions:

a) I expect the Red Sox to win the ALCS in four games. That’s right, a sweep of the mighty, precocious Rays. Yes, it’s hard to really imagine sweeping, but I have difficulty imagining a Red Sox loss — in fact, I refuse to imagine that. So, I predict a sweep.

b) The National League team that I would prefer to face in the World Series is the Dodgers. Why? Boston-L.A. is a raucous rivalry, and it would be a blast to “beat L.A.” twice in one year. It would be a classic battle of coasts, a battle of cultures, a battle of climates, a battle of styles. It’s two teams with incredibly rich baseball traditions. It would be a reunion of the 2004 Red Sox, with almost as many members of that Red Sox team on the current Dodgers squad (Manny, Lowe, and Nomar, though Nomar was only on the Sox for the first half of 2004). You know they’d show lots of highlights of the ’04 Series if the Dodgers were our opponent — and that would be fine with me. Even the Manny highlights. I still love the guy and what he brought our team.

c) When I can’t be at Fenway, my preferred mode of watching the Red Sox in a playoff game is to watch in my living room, sitting half the time and pacing the other half of the time, drinking a Polar Orange Dry soft drink, either alone or with my nine year-old son. (I’m not the best company during a Red Sox playoff game…. “anti-social” would describe me well during these three hours….)

5) I love that Francona is showing such faith in his pitching staff by keeping them in order… Daisuke, then Beckett, then Lester, with Tim Wakefield thrown in for good measure.

A funny thing is happening in Red Sox Nation. Some of the people who were “real fans” prior to 2004 – who attest to having experienced the frustration, the agony, the exasperation of at least some of the 86 years of futility – are getting irritated with the consequences of the Sox becoming a winning franchise. The effect most discussed is the explosion of new Red Sox fans. Sometimes they’re referred to as the “pink hats.” Naturally, the team is irresistible, so new fans have been drawn to the Bosox like a magnet over the past three years. (I call these people “Stage 1 Fans” in my article about the 4 stages of being a Red Sox fan.) And I think it’s great. Come on down and join the Nation. We’ve been waiting for you.

But I find it fascinating that some Red Sox fans consider themselves “more worthy” than other Red Sox fans because they’ve been paying attention longer, or because they were fans when the Sox always found a way to lose, or because they know more trivia answers about 1967, 1975, and 1986. It’s so interesting that a Red Sox fan walking down the street would scoff at another Red Sox fan walking down the street because of the Sox shirt he/she chooses to wear, or the color of the baseball hat he/she chooses to wear. I mean, come on, aren’t we all pulling for the same group of guys?

I do agree that most “new” Sox fans are easy to spot, and even easier to identify when they open their mouths. But why do so many long-term die-hards loathe them so much? Is it because, deep down, they liked it better when the Sox were trying to break the “curse” and the cameraderie we all felt revolved around a shared masochistic obsession? Is it because they feel a person must “pay his dues” before he can be called a Red Sox fan? Or is it just because they find it sickening when people flock to the winner?

It’s ironic — all the “real fans” of the Red Sox crave another World Series victory, but many of them feel a sense of loss about our identity as valiant, perennial losers. (See an interesting article about this concept here.) Some harbor an unusual longing for the good ol’ days when the Sox were on an endless quest for a world title, and new, naive Sox fans were welcomed with open arms and admired for their willingness to join the fellowship of the miserable.

Prior to 2004, it never occurred to many “real fans” of the Red Sox that winning it all would fundamentally change the meaning of Red Sox Nation and alter forever the message that a “B” hat sends to others about the cap’s wearer (we didn’t dare to dream about such outrageous notions). And as we become the best team of this century (which is also what we were at the beginning of the 20th Century), many long-term fans want the world to know, “Yeah, we’re the best now, but we weren’t for a long time and I was loyal during the tough times too.” Can you imagine how popular a cap or t-shirt would be that communicated unequivocally about it’s owner, “I was a Sox fan during the painful years”?

Of course, one option for these people would be to wear a Cubs cap. There’s something familiar and strangely appealing to many “real” Red Sox fans about the image at right….